Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, tells her persistent suitor that 'we have all a better guide in ourselves...than any other person can be'. Sometimes, however, we crave external guidance: and when this happens we could do worse than seek it in Jane Austen's own subtle novels. Written to coincide with Austen's 250th birthday, this approachable and intimate work shows why and how - for over half a century - Austen has inspired and challenged its author through different phases of her life. Part personal memoir, part expert interaction with all the letters, manuscripts and published novels, Janet Todd's book reveals what living with Jane Austen has meant to her and what it might also mean to others. Todd celebrates the undimmable power of Austen's work to help us understand our own bodies and our environment, and teach us about patience, humour, beauty and the meaning of home. ‘Intimate, knowledgeable and frequently unexpected, this is a book for all Jane Austen's readers by one of the very best of those readers.' Richard Cronin, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Glasgow ‘Sharing a mind is as exciting as sharing a bed. In this gentle, witty, semi-memoir, Janet Todd reveals her eccentric encounters with books and shows us why the novels of Jane Austen should matter to all of us now.’ Miriam Margolyes ‘This is a book for all Jane Austen’s readers by one of the very best of those readers.’ Richard Cronin, author of Byron’s Don Juan: The Liberal Epic of the Nineteenth Century ‘Jan Todd invents a new genre, part memoir, part literary criticism, to tell the captivating story of a life of reading. Benefiting from extensive study of Jane Austen and her world, Janet Todd shows us how to live with Austen’s novels, to read them and reread them and weave them into the texture of our lives. Witty and inviting, this book offers both a fresh perspective on Austen and a moving record of the struggles of feminist scholarship in the academy.’ Maud Ellmann, author of The Nets of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Sigmund Freud ‘A timely, moving and masterful book by one of the English-speaking world’s foremost literary historians and a trailblazing scholar-heroine in Jane Austen studies.’ Devoney Looser, author of The Making of Jane Austen ‘Todd is eloquent about the joys of a long reading life in which an oeuvre can mature and mellow; ‘Like the primrose or peony, Jane Austen’s novels (or Schubert’s Lieder) have become more beautiful to me now that I take time with them than they were half a lifetime ago’.’ Claire Harman, TLS ‘Janet Todd provides discreet yet tantalizing glimpses from her own decades of relating observations of current female experiences to what she found in Austen. Of course, Austen was an author who, ever the artist, showed just exactly how much she wanted to show - no more or less. It takes a scholar of Todd’s caliber, writing with shrewdness and grace, to distill a lifetime’s insights into her subject … an eloquent examination of Todd’s own life pacing by the side of Austen’s. The result is a generous sharing of both writers’ spirits and high abilities.’ Diana Birchall, JASNA News An eminent Austen authority shows us how living with Jane Austen can transform the way we look at our world. Janet Todd has been thinking and writing about books for more than half a century. She has been a biographer, novelist, critic, editor and memoirist. In the 1970s, she helped open up the study of early women writers by beginning a journal and compiling encyclopedias before editing the complete works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Aphra Behn and Jane Austen. She has worked in English departments in Africa, the West Indies, the US and the UK. A former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish and Newnham Colleges and an Emerita Professor of the University of Aberdeen.